by James Thompson

Today the new “open carry” law was put into effect in the Lone Star State. It is now legal to carry a lethal weapon in full view in public. Texans may now strut down Main Street USA with loaded firearms visible to all.

2015 marked a new level of slaughter of young black people in the USA. Many reports were made of officers, quaking in their boots, when they spotted 12-year-olds with toy guns. Their main defense was “I was afraid for my life.” These cowards shot children first and asked questions later.

Following the logic of the cops’ defense, new norms for civilized behavior are established.

If it is permissible for cops to kill children because they “fear for their life”, let’s look at what this means for everybody else.

Before proceeding, it is important to point out that in no way does this article advocate violence of any type and in fact the point of the article is to argue against wholesale violence.

Returning to the cops’ defense, if it is okay to kill when you feel your life is in danger, let’s look at what this might mean.

If it is okay to kill when you feel your life is in danger, then in Texas it follows logically that if you see a person on the street with a visible weapon, it is okay to kill them. This means that people who strut down Main Street with guns and holsters could be targeted by the police or even civilians for slaughter.

Following this logic, people who encounter law enforcement officers who are brandishing a variety of weapons might feel that their life is in danger and it logically follows that it should be okay for them to slaughter law enforcement officers who brandish weapons. Perhaps US police may want to follow the example of other civilized countries in which their law enforcement officers do not carry weapons so that people do not feel their life is in danger.

Following the logic that if you feel your life is in danger, it is okay to kill, it should be permissible for people to kill military personnel since they frequently carry weapons.

Should there be a different standard for people who are paranoid since they always feel their life is in danger?

Again, this article does not advocate killing anyone, civilian or non-civilian, but is an attempt to expose the deadly logic of “it is okay to kill if you feel threatened.”

It is too bad that Texas politicians did not watch the 1971 movie “Little Murders” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-naHV28Ws0 . Hopefully, somebody who has half a brain will reverse this dangerous law. There has been enough blood harvest in the USA.

We Charge Genocide!

By James Thompson and A. Shaw

Workers in the United States and around the world unite to renew the 1951 petition “We Charge Genocide” submitted to the General Assembly of the United Nations by the Civil Rights Congress and others. The 1951 petition opposed the genocidal violence towards African-Americans in the United States at that time. This renewal opposes the contemporary genocidal violence towards African-Americans in the United States and it is a plea for relief from the United Nations.

The United Nations declared that genocide imperils world peace. The opening statement of the 1951 petition “We Charge Genocide” reads “The responsibility is particularly grave when citizens must charge their own government with mass murder of its own nationals, with institutionalized oppression and persistent slaughter of the Negro people in the United States on a basis of ‘race,’ a crime abhorred by mankind and prohibited by the conscience of the world as expressed in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1948.”

The international legal definition of the crime of genocide is found in Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.

Article II describes two elements of the crime of genocide:

1) the mental element, meaning the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such, and

2) the physical element which includes five acts described in sections a, b, c, d and e. A crime must include both elements to be called “genocide.”

Article III described five punishable forms of the crime of genocide: genocide; conspiracy, incitement, attempt and complicity.

64 years after the original petition “We Charge Genocide” was filed, the people of the United States continue to be subjected to the most violent terrorism by the government. One sector of the population, African-Americans, has borne and continues to bear the brunt of this terrorism. The terrorism is multifaceted and includes murders of individuals by the police, mass incarceration, unbearably high unemployment rates, homelessness, lack of access to healthcare and education, drug infestation, soaring crime rates, endless wars and capital punishment.

According to the NAACP, 76 “unarmed men and women of color” were murdered by police officers between 1999 and 2014.

The 1951 petition “We Charge Genocide” points out that violence on our shores leads to violence against other countries and this insight is just as true today as it was then.

We demand that the genocidal violence against African-Americans in the United States end immediately. The recent increase in police murders of African-Americans in the United States must cease immediately. If these senseless murders continue, it will become readily apparent to all that these acts may be a result of some deranged national policy. Similarly, we will not tolerate mass incarceration and astronomical unemployment rates any longer. The lack of affordable housing, and diminishing access to healthcare and education leads to drug infestation and soaring crime rates and this must be reversed if we are to continue as a civilized society.

The lack of opportunity for young black people in the USA propels them towards either mass incarceration or military service. Mass incarceration and military service are modern day forms of slavery. We demand that young African-Americans have opportunities to be productive members of society and fulfill their potentials.

The death penalty must be stopped on a national level. It has been disproportionately administered to African-Americans in the USA. It is inherently cruel and unusual punishment. It is an egregious violation of human rights. It is genocidal.

Please join the fight for justice in the USA and to end the genocidal practices against African-Americans. Do this to honor Michael Brown, James Byrd, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Eric Courtney Harris and many others.

Please click on the link to sign the petition:

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/we-charge-genocide-1?source=c.em&r_by=8638452

February 25, 2015

Picket tomorrow against Harper’s so-called anti-terror bill

A picket has been organized against the Conservative Party’s misnamed anti-terror bill:

Shelly Glover, MP’s office
Thursday, Feb. 26, 4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
213 St. Mary’s Road (near Traverse)

All groups are welcome, including to speak and co-sponsor.

* * * * *
Harper’s legislation will enable the RCMP and CSIS to crack down on all resistance in Canada, against democratic and workers’ struggles.

There is no “balance” in the bill. It gives free reign to the government’s security apparatus at the same time it attacks Canadians’ rights and freedoms.

There is no evidence that the government needs to give such power to secret, actually political police. Historically, such legislation has always been used once passed:  to outlaw socialist parties (1918), crush the Winnipeg General Strike (1919), outlaw the Communist Party (1931, two years before Germany and Japan, and 1939), and imprison hundreds of innocent people during the FLQ crisis.

As found by the Royal Commission on Certain Activities of the RCMP (1977), even without such laws the police carried out serious criminal activities against progressive organizations, including the Communist Party, many of which remain unpublished and secret to this day.

So it can safely be said, the bill is unnecessary and is intended to create fear and conformity among Canadians with the Conservative Party’s definition of terrorism.

The Communist Party is wholly opposed to terrorism as a tactic in the mass struggles for democracy and socialism, but the Conservative government is using this bill to instill fear in the general public and to draw attention away from its own pro-terror policies such as bombing Yugoslavia and Libya, helping Ukraine’s pro-Nazi regime which is terrorizing its population and banning the Communist Party there, and deporting U.S. military veterans who are opposed to war crimes to serve lengthy sentences in U.S. military prisons – pursuing a pro-war crime agenda.

The Communist Party completely rejects the idea that this bill is needed to counter so-called “eco-terrorism” or the serious, false charge against Aboriginal rights activists that they are terrorists. The proven use of agents provocateurs in anti-globalization protests by police shows who are the real criminals.

The bill targets the resistance to corporate control of Canada.

The bill’s first target is the international unity of working people, Arab and non-Arab, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, Russian and non-Russian.

Who are the Conservative party’s targets-of-choice, the targets of RCMP wrongdoing, jailings and outright banning since the beginning of mercantile and settler colonialism, the Red River Resistance and the Winnipeg General Strike?

Politically, it is socialist parties, especially the Communist Party which supports the resistance against corporate influence and domination and works to build the international unity of working people and oppressed nations (outlawed 3 times).

In terms of the people’s resistance, it is the trade union movement and oppressed nations, Aboriginal peoples and Quebec’s movement for self-determination and equality.

The anti-terror legislation is certain to broaden the dirty tricks, secret police wrongdoing and repression.

That is why the Communist Party in Winnipeg will hold a picket to protest the new bill this week.

Everyone is invited to bring their signs and messages of resistance.

Vive la resistance,
Penner-Bethune Club, Communist Party of Canada

Information: Darrell Rankin (204) 792-3371

Dear Friends, Comrades, Sisters and Brothers,

It’s vitally important to have a quick and sharp protest against the Conservative Party’s misnamed anti-terror bill. At times, numbers don’t matter as much as the resistance actions such as this can spark. Help be a spark.

You are invited to a picket at Shelly Glover, MP’s office. Bring your signs and messages of resistance and solidarity. All groups are welcome, including to speak and co-sponsor.

Thursday, Feb. 26, 4:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m.
213 St. Mary’s Road (near Traverse)

There’s an event page that you can share on your timeline and where you can invite friends. Please do so; it would be great if we had a larger crowd for rush hour traffic:
https://www.facebook.com/events/436876659795959/

* * * * * *
Harper’s legislation will enable the RCMP and CSIS to crack down on all resistance in Canada, against democratic and workers’ struggles.

It targets the resistance to corporate control of Canada.

Its first target is the international unity of working people, Arab and non-Arab, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, Russian and non-Russian.

Who are the Conservative party’s targets-of-choice, the targets of RCMP wrongdoing, jailings and outright banning since the beginning of mercantile and settler colonialism, the Red River Resistance and the Winnipeg General Strike?

Politically, it is socialist parties, especially the Communist Party which supports the resistance against corporate influence and domination and works to build the international unity of working people and oppressed nations (outlawed 3 times).

In terms of the people’s resistance, it is the trade union movement and oppressed nations, Aboriginal peoples and Quebec’s movement for self-determination and equality.

The anti-terror legislation is certain to broaden the dirty tricks, secret police wrongdoing and repression.*

That is why the Communist Party in Winnipeg will hold a picket to protest the new bill this week.

Everyone is invited to bring their signs and messages of resistance.

Vive la resistance,
Penner-Bethune Club, Communist Party of Canada

*Even before this new bill, things were so bad that at one point PM Trudeau was forced to call a Royal Commission into Certain Activities of the RCMP (1977). Some findings remain secret to this day.

Havana, February 13, 2015
Remarks at the presentation of the book ¿Quién mató al Che?
Cómo la CIA logró salir impune del asesinato by Michael Ratner
and Michael Steven Smith, Social Sciences Publishing House, Cuba.
[Spanish translation of Who Killed Che? How the CIA Got Away With Murder]

Unofficial translation by Susana Hurlich, Havana
================================================
A Book that was Missing
Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada

Michael Ratner and Michael Steven Smith, in addition to being eminent lawyers, are active participants in the most important battles of the North American people for justice and freedom. Their book, dedicated to Leonard Weinglass – who, up to his last breath, devoted his life to the liberation of the Five Cuban anti-terrorists who served long years of unjust and cruel imprisonment in the United States – pays well-deserved tribute to our mutual friend when our heroes have now returned free to the Homeland.

To fight for justice in that country means, above all, to seek the truth and make it known in the most difficult of circumstances, confronting the concealment and manipulation of a powerful machinery determined to impose nothing else but ignorance on millions of people. This is a task that Lenny as well as Ratner and Smith have known how to carry out assiduously and consistently.

To prove that Ernesto Guevara was assassinated by the CIA, that his death was a war crime – a crime that never perishes – and that this deed was entirely the responsibility of the U.S. government called for an unremitting search.

After many years of demanding that the authorities comply with their own laws with respect to public access to information, today we can read documents that, despite the crossings-out and deletions that still seek to conceal numerous facts, allow the reader to discover that the official versions about Ernesto Guevara’s final combat were deliberately distorted.

It’s all about trying to make us believe that Washington preferred that Che, defeated and taken prisoner, would continue to live and that the crime was the result of unilateral decisions made by soldiers of the Bolivian Army who were then a docile instrument of the Empire.

Much has been written about Che and his epic Bolivian campaign and there are many authors who echoed the interpretation fabricated by the exponents of “plausible deniability.” At this stage, when both selective and massive assassination and the practice of torture and extrajudicial executions have become a generalized practice of a new way of making war, the book by Ratner and Smith is an opportune reminder that such treatment has a long trajectory.

It is as old as that of using servile armies and assassins – uniformed or not – as simple tools causing countless suffering to the peoples of Latin America under military dictatorships that the United States equipped, trained and managed.

In an earlier book, published in 1997 and the result of an equally relentless pursuit, the authors had revealed how the FBI tracked Ernesto Guevara’s activities in Guatemala and Mexico when he was not yet Che. In this book that they offer us now it can be confirmed that during his Bolivian campaign he was obsessively followed at the highest levels in Washington.

The U.S. Government’s Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for the cold-blooded murder of a wounded and unarmed young prisoner by the name of Ernesto Guervara. The actual perpetrators of the cowardly act were soldiers who acted under the control of the CIA and obeyed their orders without batting an eye.

Some are still walking, however, on the streets of Miami or are in their offices at Langley, mulling over their frustration. Because they could not kill Che. Che continued to live and his message returned victorious in a new Bolivia and in a Latin America that confidently moves ahead towards complete emancipation.

Because Che fought all his life leading the list of those named as essential by Bertolt Brecht. Essential are those who are never missing when they are most needed, those who are present, always on the front line, when the struggle is harder and more complex.

That is why Che lives. Because we need him now more than ever.

The Cuban edition of this book appears in a new juncture in which we greatly need the Guevarian light. Now we are entering a stage that poses new challenges that we must face with wisdom and firmness. The historic enemy of our people has not changed its nature or its strategy of domination, only its tactics. Because its crude and violent policy – and it is recognized as such – of half a century failed, now it will test methods that intend to be more subtle to achieve the same ends.

We must accept the challenge and advance down that path without ever abandoning our principles. And always remembering Che’s visionary warning. Do not trust the imperialists “not even a little bit, not in anything.”

Source: Venezuelanalysis